Reverberation chambers

A reverberation chamber is a specialized EMC test chamber generating very high field strength using modest amplifier power. The reflections between the RF shielded walls are optimized to add up to maximum of as many standing waves as practically possible. The chamber is mainly used for testing electrical immunity of test objects. The RF shielding is established by constructing the reverberation chamber from a 2 mm pan-type galvanized or 3mm aluminum panel system. RF shielded doors and cabling access to the reverberation chamber are specially shielded for RF signals. This ensures that unwanted electrical noise from the outside world does not affect the test results and electrical immunity testing can be made without disturbing the surroundings.

EMC testing in a reverberation chamber

When performing EMC testing the reverberation chamber is mode-stirred or mode-tuned by means of a stirrer. A stirrer system is a (large) structure of aluminum plates that is stepwise turned during testing. The objective is to maximize the standing wave pattern in the usable test volume. These EMC tests are statistically evaluated and the “worst case” data are used for the final evaluation of the test result. In addition to immunity testing electrical emission tests or specialized EMC testing in accordance to military, aerospace or automotive EMC test standards can be performed in the reverberation chamber.

Multi functional EMC test chamber

The reverberation chamber creates a multi functional EMC test chamber for commercial, military and automotive EMC testing. Comtest reverberation rooms comply with the IEC 61000-4-21prt 4-21, EUROCAE/ED-14F, MIL-STD 461F, RTCA/DO-160 standard as well as various automotive standards. The reverberation chamber can also be used for immunity and shielding effectiveness tests as well as for measuring total radiated power. Another application for the reverberation chamber is simulating complex multipath environments like computer rooms and other electrically congested areas.

Advantage of a reverberation chamber

The main advantage of EMC testing in a reverberation chamber over the traditional semi anechoic chamber tests is that less power input is required to achieve the same field levels which make expensive amplifier systems obsolete.

Reverberation chamber solutions

Comtest Engineering can supply the following reverberation chamber solutions: